Living well in the urban village

Lazy Gardening

I sometimes wonder if proper gardeners would be appalled at how we manage our backyard.

It certainly doesn’t follow traditional guidelines. But our first and foremost rule with our backyard garden is that it can’t add stress to our lives. So we simply do what we can, when we can.

We encourage the plants we like to go to seed (“encourage” might be generous, perhaps it’s better to say we don’t bother pulling them out), and use very little pest control – the occasional puff of diatomaceous earth or a squirt of Eco-oil – thereby allowing predator numbers to build up. Most importantly, we’ve adjusted our eyes – so now we see lush, abundant growth in the beds, rather than unruly plants and weeds.

With the latest bed, we’ve tried something new again. After the chooks were moved, the soil was well watered – it can get very dry under the chicken dome, and needs rehydrating before anything else is added to it. Then we raked and watered in a bag of cow manure, a few handfuls of blood and bone, and some rock minerals (we find chicken poop alone isn’t quite enough for the plants).

It’s been a month since the previous photo was taken, and this is what the bed looks like now…

Fennel and red rainbow chard seedlings have popped up en masse…

We’ll now selectively weed out what we don’t want – we’ll eat young chard or feed it to the chooks, as there’s so much of it…

The red amaranth has made a reappearance…

We moved one of the A-frames from a previous bed and threw in a handful of snake bean seeds. They’ve started climbing – not sure how they’ll cope with the approaching cool weather…

Brassicas have started to appear, which is a great thing, as I miss eating them in the hot summer months…

Chinese greens are growing, which probably means more dumplings are on the cards…

Parsley and chickweed seedlings have germinated…

I don’t remember adding purslane seed to the mulch mix, but here it is, nonetheless…

Our perennial leeks are growing in a huge clump – we didn’t get around to separating them in time, so now we’re eating young ones in place of spring onions…

. . . . .

In other garden news…

…we’re still getting a few eggplants every week…

A lovely mutant broccoli appeared in one of the beds…

Here’s a good example of permaculture in action. The broccoli leaves were covered in pests. We left them there, and soon the predators discovered them and wiped them all out. The leaves are damaged, but the edible bit of the plant is still very much intact, and our predator insects have been well-fed…

Lovely Jo sent me arrowroot tubers from her garden a couple of years ago. We planted them at the front of the garden, and they’ve grown prolifically.

Initially, we hoped to use them as shade plants, but they’re far more useful as mulch…

We’re planting more arrowroot near the back fence – it’s as easy as cutting off a tuber and sticking it in the ground…

We cut the large leaf stalks and allow them to dry, along with all the spent seed heads, and any other firm plant material that isn’t an unwanted weed. Once it’s all dry, it will go through our mulcher and become a pre-seeded “topping” for our next bed…

We’ve learnt a lot about tromboncinos this year – the two plants we managed to raise from seed grew extensively but didn’t make any fruit at all. We think that in our garden at least, the trombies need more than one point where they touch the soil – they do best when they’re given room to scramble over a bed…

…as our mutant squash has. It’s still making fruit…

Our gorgeous yellow cherry tomatoes are at the end of their run – the bugs have found them now. Thankfully, the chickens go absolutely crazy for them…

Finally, on our kitchen bench is a colander full of drying cayenne chillis from the garden – they’re deliciously hot. We pick a few every week…

How are things going in your garden? Do you have any lazy gardening tips?

73 Responses

Celia, I am so very inspired to put aside my need for rows and cast seed as you have done here. Ah, and to “adjusted our eyes – so now we see lush, abundant growth in the beds, rather than unruly plants and weeds.” These are now my garden goals this year. :)

We’ve got all our Spring tomatoes and herbs in. No tips to think of except that you are right, bolted basil makes bees happy. We do throw coffee grounds in all our pots for mulch and regular aspirin is good for plants so we put two or three in the pots. That’s all I know, Maz. :-)

I always like your garden posts. Maybe I should leave my rows and just broadcast my seeds! Or mix the seeds in with mulch in the fall before it snows and wait for a pleasant surprise in the spring. Would be a time-saver, I think! Beautiful plants and pictures.

Manuela, we’re blessed with a very obliging climate, where things grow year round. What we found was that we weren’t very good at timing our seedlings – there never seemed to be any ready for when we needed them. Then all the self-sown plants came up without our help. So we thought we’d just try to encourage that process along! :)

I love your garden and your philosophy. In my garden today was Filippo, the lovely young man who comes to help me. We have made garden beds behind the house, we have planted a peach, pomegranate and a gorgeous rhododendron under the hazelnut trees.
Today I bought 2 olive trees, a weeping cherry that is heavenly, and a magnolia to plant near the entrance to the property. I can’t wait to see them growing.

I’m definitely a fan of lazy gardening – and that definitely includes seeing self-seeding as something that saves me effort rather than as something pesky. Perennial veggies are definitely good for laziness in my garden too, including my walking onions. Wish my laziness had such tasty, lush results as yours though – your garden looks wonderful Celia!

From a recent ‘lurker’…It seems to me, Celia, you are such a multi-talented cook, gardener, photographer, family person, friend, neighbour and blogger. Most of all what impresses me is your caring and sharing of your experience and expertise with flair and good humour. Well done and thank you, Celia!

Your garden looks wonderful. I am a big fan of self seeded gardens and leave lots of things to go to seed. I especially like to let a big head of spring onion dry out, then snip it off in autumn, bury the whole head, and Voila,,six million spring onions to transplant. Parsley, silver beet and coriander land where the can, but lately I have decided to transplant the seedlings when they are strong enough in order to allow the soil to recover from the same crops. This does involve a little more work, but as our soil here is really poor, and is all made from compost and chook poo, crop rotation has become essential. This year has been an exceptional bad year in Victoria. A cold Spring, followed by an extremely hot summer with no rain at all meant that everything struggled. It is coming back now, with plenty of eggplants and chillis, but the usual glut and self sowing didn’t happen. What a rambler am today, just like your tromboncino.

Francesca, we’ve found that because we don’t have enough time to work really hard on getting heaps of organic material into the soil, we need to add manure and blood and bone to our beds. We also have a very active worm farm, which makes a huge difference – I just need to remember to wash the worm juice off salad leaves before eating! :) Our pre-seeded mulch approach (this is our first attempt at it) has worked so well that we might adopt it for future beds – raising seedlings is a bit beyond us just at the minute.

your garden looks so lush and green celia..but you take care of your soil with all the wonderful mulch and chook poo etc..i love the look of rows of vegetables but i also like it when i get self seeding plants coming up..i don’t have to plant parsley any more for that reason and each summer i have a tomato with very small fruit that grows in different spots..the seeds must have come from the soil in a pot because i originally planted that tomato more than 10 years ago in my former garden..same with coriander this year too..lots just came up where i’d previously had it growing and, like you, that i’d left to go to seed..x

Jane, we haven’t planted tomato in ages, but we’re getting such lovely cherry ones lately. It depends a lot on the season and when the fruit fly discover the plants (the diatomaceous earth helps a bit). Parsley, purslane, leeks, cos lettuce, basil, chard and chickweed are here for the long haul, I think – we haven’t planted any of those for several seasons now, but they keep popping up! :)

We garden like you garden. Let the stuff we have excess of or don’t want go to seed (couldn’t get our rocket going at all) and pick the rest. Our tomatoes went crazy this year, reckon we will get 1 more good crop before the cold. No lazy gardening tips from me. But I will say, having the fresh produce on hand was wonderful. Beautiful lush garden you have, makes me wish for more Summer. Happy weekend to you.

We have such a mixed result with rocket that we don’t grow it any more. Too hard to pick it out from all the weeds! We now tend to grow just cos lettuce, because we can pull out the whole head – harvesting has to be easy too! :D

What a good object lesson ~ you don’t stress and the plants don’t stress alongside you! And the chickens do what comes naturally and you balance it out and all the vegetables like living with you ;) !! My problem is not the back yard where ripening Meyer lemons are lording it over all else, but my incredibly messy front one watered but not touched for months. Well, somehow ended up with three trays [24 punnets] of giant pansies yesterday, so off the computer and onto weeding, fertilizing and planting for a few days :) !

Hi Celia, have been feeling quite down this week after the funeral and returning to yet another stressful week at work. I love the greenery, it reminds me so much of my father in laws garden in Canada during the summer months. I find it quite tranquil and peaceful when walking around his garden and marvel at what is grown, it was lovely to do the same looking at your pictures. Thank you for sharing x

That “adjust your eyes” is such a permaculture principle. There’s an old permaculture joke that you don’t have a slug problem, you have a duck deficiency. Amazing bit of alchemy turning garden trash into such lush food!

Linda, thank you, this comment made Pete and I very happy! We’d never thought of it before, but you’re right – nothing makes it to our green recycling bin anymore, apart from a few bad weeds, as it’s now recycled into mulch!

I am with you on the “adjust your eyes”. I have had to adjust mine significantly as the possums chewed their way through a plethora of pumpkins but I seem to have found where they were getting in and we haven’t had any nocturnal invasions of late so hopefully we might just get a few pumpkins. I love the way that you garden. Nature would garden exactly like that and the gorgeous green (and red) results are a testiment to your understanding and willingness to experiment. I love reading your posts because although Steve and I know a lot about trees and shrubs we know very little about vegetables, fruit and nut trees and perennials. Your blog is a haven of information and possibilities. Thankyou for sharing your amazing permie garden with us all :)

What are you talking about? You wonder what proper gardeners would think….you are proper gardeners. I love your natural style and the way the two of you work together. Your garden is lush and a living growing creature with happy little chooks. You are THE gardener. x

Nothing much is happening in my garden, sadly. I love how you are just so casual about your garden and yet what abundance! It’s all so lush and green. Sometimes I think it’s good to just let things go to seed and not be so worried about having a neat and tidy garden – it certainly rewards you when the next season comes around xx

It looks incredible – I love your approach! Sadly we will be in between two countries this summer so won’t be able to devote much time or attention to veggies but will make sure we have plenty of herbs to see us through the summer!

Thank you! Tonight there were two curries for dinner – a fish and prawn one, and a vegetable one, and all the veg except for onions came from the garden – eggplants, two sorts of beans, rainbow chard, lime basil, kaffir lime leaf, and red and yellow cherry tomatoes. And it was all delish! :)

Straight rows and weed free is alien in my garden too Celia. Yours is so lovely, and obviously is very happy to keep producing many generations of plants, despite no chemicals or defined areas. I caught BigJ pulling out my self sown silverbeet the other day with the excuse that it wasn’t actually growing in the garden bed- Let’s just say he won’t be making that mistake again in a hurry :) xox

I love your approach to gardening. Unless you are a farmer, I think people put so much stress on themselves when it comes to what should be an enjoyable hobby with the benefit of growing food. I know people who get so stressed by “having” to get a certain plant or seed in the ground on a specific day that they’ve been out there before the ground has even thawed. It’s sort of OCD if you ask me. As I look at your garden I see beauty and interesting things to investigate.

Di, we just can’t let the garden become stressful, or we’d never go outside! At the moment it’s bucketing down out there – will be interesting to see what all the rain and colder weather do to the plants! :)

Your garden looks like an Eden! After a couple of years going old school raising seedlings and the like now I just let things go to seed too, hopefully they are doing that now while we are away from home. Last year we had carrots coming up everywhere in cracks in the bricks and in hanging baskets, hilarious.

Thank you! Funnily enough, the one thing which we don’t have much luck with is carrots – they take so long to grow that it doesn’t really fit into our bed rotation schedule. We’ll have to try again! :)

What a nice way to grow a garden! I have been wrestling with nature a lot in ordering my own garden to suit my way. Nature usually wins – and throws in some nice surprises as consolation – like tomatoes and amaranth sprouting by themselves, and coriander (which refused to sprout when I tried by hardest) just magically emerging when it was ready :-) Hmmnnn I think I like the idea of lazy gardening….:-)